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The Idiots

by Joseph Conrad

We were driving alo the road from Tr to Kervanda. We passed at a smtr between the hed topping an earth wa on each side of the road; th at the foot of the steep ascent before Ploum the hor dropped into a walk, and the driver jumped do heavily fr the box. He fl his whip and cli the incline, stepping clumsily uphill by the side of the carriage, one hand on the footboard, his eyes on the ground. After a while he lifted his head, poin up the road with the end of the whip, and said-- "The idiot!" The sun was shining violently up the undulating surface of the land. The rises were topped by clumps of meagre trees, with their branches showing high on the sky as if they had been pe upon stilts. The sma fields, cut up by hedges and stone walls that zig-zagged over the slopes, lay in rectangular patches of vivid gr and yellows, resembling the unskilful daubs of a naive picture. And the landscape was divided in two by the white st of a ro stretching in long loops far away, like a river of dust crawling out of the hills on its way to the sea. "Here he is," said the driver, again. In the long grborde the road a face glided past the carriage at the level of the whee as we drove slowly by. The imb face was red, and the bullet head with close-cropped hair seemed to lie alone, its chin in the dust. The body was lo in the bushes growing thick al the bottom of the deep ditch. It was a boy's face. He might have been sixteen, judging fr the size--perhaps less, perha more. Such creatures are forgotten by time, and live un by yea till death gath up in its compassionate bosom; the fai death that neforge in the press of work the most insigni of its children. "Ah! there's another," said the man, with a certain satisfaction in his tone, as if he had caught sight of something expected. There was another. That one stood nearly in the mid of the road in the bla of suns at the end of his own short shadow. And he stood wi hands pusin the opposite slee of his long coat, his he sunk between the shoulders, all hun up in the flood of heat. From a distan he had the aspect of one sufffrin cold.